How Woke Won: The Elitist Movement That Threatens Democracy, Tolerance and Reason: 1 (None)

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We aim to look at how, where and why individual and structural racism impacts people of colour from all walks of life.

woke’ was hijacked to silence people of colour How the word ‘woke’ was hijacked to silence people of colour

Until Russell Brand is found guilty of a criminal offence, we must assume he is innocent. This means taking the criminal allegations made against him seriously while, at the same time, not automatically believing those who claim to have been sexually assaulted by him, simply because they are women. With more women now coming forward with accusations against Brand, we need to maintain this scepticism.

Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar, a defender of the British empire as a moral good, claimed that Rhodes “was an imperialist, but British colonialism was not essentially racist, and wasn’t essentially exploitative, and wasn’t essentially atrocious”. Rhodes was merely “a supporter of the British empire as a modernising force for good”.

How duty can set us free - spiked

Earlier this year, former actor Laurence Fox caused a stir on Question Time by claiming to be ‘anti-woke’ and repeatedly slamming ‘wokeness’ on various media platforms. His comments won him hoards of followers on social media and he used his fleeting relevance to criticise Oscar-winning film 1917 for including Sikh soldiers.

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Woke has conquered the West. Identity politics, cancel culture and trans ideology reign. The values of “inclusivity” and “diversity” dominate politics, academia, the media, the judiciary, big business and the very language we speak. Censorship and public shaming are the price paid for dissent or even staying silent. Far from being progressive, woke twists older ideas of racial and sexual equality beyond all recognition. It leaves us unable to defend women’s rights and pushes us to judge people according to the colour of their skin. Woke thinking benefits only a small minority at the very top of society. But to keep spiked free we ask regular readers like you, if you can afford it, to chip in – to make sure that those who can’t afford it can continue reading, sharing and arguing. There has been much criticism of taking down statues as the “rewriting of history”, but little recognition that many statues themselves were erected to substantiate an often distorted historical narrative. Monuments, whether to Winston Churchill or to the Bristol slaver Edward Colston, or indeed to Mary Wollstonecraft, are not just dumb pieces of stone. Each is designed to tell a particular story. Want to rid an Oxford college of a statue of an imperialist? That’s “wokery”. Too many immigrants? Blame the woke. Insufficiently appreciative of the British empire? You’re in the “woke orthodoxy”. Want to strangle Andrew Neil’s new radio station even before it airs? That’s the “woke warriors”. Joe Biden in the White House? “The high priest of the cult of woke.”